The end of the year encourages reflection and celebration. One way I practice both is by commemorating this year’s movies that I regard with personal fervor. My tradition of making lists requires both overly geeky scrutiny and exuberant love for the art of filmmaking; what results is not only a list of movie titles, but an illustration of who I was as a person in the year 2010.

I am thankful I have this blog as an outlet, as it is a time capsule of opinions that come from someone who is currently obsessed with film. Before turning 2010 into a memory, I would like to preserve my thoughts on how five particular movie trailers astounded and affected me this year.

Accented by a harrowing score, Black Swan’s premiere trailer chauffeurs us through a nightmare of paranoia and disillusionment. Ominous, upsetting colors clash with violent editing to celebrate the terror that only a scathed mind can conjure. With elegance, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis enhance the beauty that ballet already provides, but with an estranged twist from director Darren Aronofsky, this preview mixes charm and delirium to create something artfully unnerving.

4. Buried

Horror/thriller films often exploit the power of sound to cheaply elicit fear. Sudden bursts of noise, typically used in a jump scare, do not motivate freight as effectively as a sound that billows with slow, insurmountable tension. Buried’s teaser trailer recognizes this, as it crescendos from quiet nervousness to riotous apprehension, all with the use of sound. In the preview’s last moments, we finally scrape an image from the darkness to reveal the context of the corresponding audio.

3. The Tree of Life

By widening its focus on humanity, the preview for Terrence Malick’s highly anticipated The Tree of Life transcends mere advertisement and propaganda. This pensive montage gallops towards a threshold that combines the plight of one’s past and the mystery of the unknowing future to illustrate the spectrum of life. Gorgeous imagery and celestial melodies course through its veins, vicariously breathing life into ourselves.

2. Blue Valentine

Blue Valentine’s highly visceral teaser manages to express love under numerous circumstances. Whether it’s through an intimate stare shared between two lovers or through a quarrel that almost dismantles them, the insight into this unabashedly real relationship strikes a chord of imperfection and solace. By juxtaposing such complex imagery with the simplistic tune of a ukulele, this preview somehow eloquently tackles both the joy and frustration of being in love.

1. True Grit

Haunted by a foreboding hymn, the terse preview for True Grit seems to solemnly strip the innocence away from our thirteen year old protagonist. Her stoic voiceover illustrates the audacity of the conquest she’s about to embark on, and I have nothing but fear for her. Roger Deakins’ beautiful cinematography creates an epic landscape riddled with wrath and retribution, and the characters that fill that desolate space seem just as relentless.

With the start of another semester approaching, I feel I should take a second to contemplate the year thus far. In short, I believe it’s been a cinematic drought. The past eight months have provided us with only a handful of noteworthy films. Otherwise, the lot has been filled with either cash-grabbing remakes, uninspired sequels, or straightforward disappointments. To assuage the disappointment of this year’s fruitless filmic delivery, I’ve compiled a list of my personal favorites. I should be a little optimistic, right?

3. Terribly Happy

Although Terrbily Happy hails from Denmark, it’s a film that is surprisingly inspired by some of America’s greatest directors. Impressions of David Lynch and the Coen Brothers are prevalent throughout the movie’s tensest scenes, and simple American iconography is seen percolating in the quieter, much somber moments. It’s an interesting tone for an even more interesting story. Consolidating film noir and western together, Terribly Happy saunters its way into telling a compelling and very tragic tale.

2. Inception

Unlike anything we’ve seen this year, Inception bends physics, alters time, and damns the viewers’ mind. Director Christopher Nolan imbues us with a cinematic pleasure that’s as precious as the the movie’s subject. Ornately dressed with special effects and great performances, Inception is one of 2010’s best moviegoing experiences.

1. How to Train Your Dragon

Yes, it remains! How to Train Your Dragon is still my favorite film of 2010. Sure, it’s a simple story of a boy and his pet, but to me, it’s a conglomeration of emotions so subjective and personal that it’s impossible to describe on this blog. Nevertheless, there are still plenty of things I can say…The film explores infinite terrain with whimsical scope, but the sense of danger that is projected is unmistakably real. This is done with great technical craftsmanship, but an equally satisfying core of characters also aids in making this film outstanding.

THE PRESENT

Despite my aversion towards this year’s catalog of films, there are some great titles out right now. For instance…

Cyrus

Brothers Mark and Jay Duplass, the innovators behind the mumblecore movement, dually take on their first “Hollywood” film. To the movie’s benefit, Cyrus elegantly uses minimalism to naturally elicit deep characterization and pure emotional resonance.

The Kids are All Right

I’ll be seeing this in the next few days, so I will give my full thoughts then. However, reviews for this dramedy continue to be glowing with positivity.

Winter’s Bone

Winter’s Bone has been accumulating buzz since its premiere at the Sundance Festival. Winning the Grand Jury Prize, this literary adaptationis carrying a lot of momentum on its shoulders. Hopefully, I can check it out when it comes to the local art theater at school.

After two frustratingly ambiguous teasers, the theatrical trailer for David Fincher’s The Social Network finally emerges, and it is surprisingly stunning. Enhanced by a musically effective and haunting rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep”, the preview suggests that this upcoming movie about Facebook should be taken seriously.

The film’s color and photography appear stylistically ominous, and the acting and writing shown indicate that the drama is just as engaging. Hopefully, Fincher can knock it out of the park, just as this trailer did.

The Social Network will open the New York Film Festival in September. It will then be released on October 1, 2010.

If there is one thing the Harry Potter series has successfully crafted through its entirety, it is its own level of maturity. From the innocence and wonderment of a wizarding world as seen in the first two installments to the realistic danger identified in the later sequels, the series has expertly encapsulated the point of the books: growing up.

Now, with Mr. Potter near the end of the road, the stakes are higher, the challenges are more daunting, and the pressure is insurmountable. Transitively, the film appears grander, the music sounds more epic than ever, and the trailer, itself, feels incredibly fatalistic.

The one thing that irks me about this preview is the self-referential text poorly spliced together with the montage.

“THE FINALE OF THE WORLDWIDE PHENOMENON.”

“THE MOTION PICTURE EVENT OF A GENERATION.”

I think the trailer speaks for itself. We don’t need textual reminders.

Regardless of my dumb nitpicking, I’m looking forward to these upcoming months. Advertisement for the films has always been well done, and the series has been a part of my entire life. Of course, I’m more than excited.

Based off the trailer, Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere bears a striking resemblance to her most popular film, Lost in Translation. Yet, this new project seems to more consistently clasp a level of hope and wholesomeness, two things her predecessor often combated. Gone is the loathsomeness that comes with an estranged city and unfamiliar people, and in comes the intimacy of two somewhat close people getting even closer. Lost in Translation is quite subdued, and this looks no different; however, Coppola always manages to find excitement amidst a world of loneliness, and the lessons that she shares are undoubtedly heartfelt.

Nothing clutches my attention more than the film noir genre. Cynicism, disillusionment, fatalism…I eat it all up. Since this breed of film rarely sees light these days, anything that remotely resembles it immediately peaks my interest.

George Clooney’s upcoming film The American does exactly that. Ominous cinematography, dreary music, colorful contrasts…I’m eating it all up.